


Glitch

by rumithe



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, they perished together after twenty thousands of years so i think this is a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24603373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rumithe/pseuds/rumithe
Summary: The PL600 android with the serial number #501 743 923 woke up from his forced long sleep 26124 years after their people won the revolution and faced his RK200 again -  when neither of them had physical forms anymore.
Relationships: Markus/Simon (Detroit: Become Human)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Glitch

**Author's Note:**

> The general setting that Markus decided to create a network was from my friend when we were talking about what would happen after they succeeded in taking a peaceful protest.
> 
> Eng is not my mother tongue and there's no beta. If anyone reads this I hope it wouldn't be too hard for you to understand. 
> 
> The author suggests that you read this fic accompanied by "Little One".  
> (I smh chose this accidentally because when I was writing it shuffled to this song ;) )

The PL600 android with the serial number #501 743 923 woke up from his forced long sleep 26124 years after their people won the revolution.

It was quickly followed by a warning popped out in his system that he was in process of self-destruction.

He saw millions of glowing light dots in front of him, and realised he was now existing in such a colossal form as giant as an earth. He used to think that a universe would be in dreadful silence and darkness, but it turned out to be the opposite case.

He had never seen anything as bright as it when he witnessed the silent cosmos revealing itself like a boundless atlas, trillions of dying stars giving out their final glaring to prove their being to this world and trillions of living planets staying quiet as ever and awaiting to its end some day in the future.

Before he started to be confused, the final last memory he shared only with himself and his lover came into his blurry sight due to the unstable electricity connection – or he was not even sure that was still called electricity.

He remembered his lover.

That RK200 was called Markus, wasn’t he?

To the humans, he was addressed as the leader of the deviants; to their people, he showed as the messiah rA9, carrying a destined duty to change it all for all the androids being mistreated or on the run; to him, he was just Markus, a deviant with eyes of different colours who had made his tough way to Jericho after escaping a living hell, a deviant he fell deeply in love with.

The name Markus should have no more meaning apart from this, but at some point of the android history, everything was changed.

It was an evening, as PL600 could recall, that brought them to another stage, and what he saw now was definitely its consequence, even though the truth showed that what RK200’s plan failed because they were self-destroying, or perhaps even this end was in his expectation.

That evening, they were at the terrace of Cyberlife Tower, when no one or nothing else was around, the one unique RK200 reached out for his hand. It took him a couple of second to realise he was invited, somehow bitterly took his lover’s hand and walked to the edge, overlooking the Detroit City which was no actually different from how it had been before they took the uprising. That cruise called “Jericho” was now replaced with another skyscraper probably as high as where they were standing by then.

He stared in the distance, but the request to reaccess the memory was, for some reasons, denied by the system.

“This is our future.” He heard RK200’s voice.

Our future.

It sounded so familiar. He remembered clearly that they had been discussing this before they decided to take a peaceful protest.

He told RK200 that he wanted to take care of a child again, no matter humans or android children. After all he was initially designed for this and even after he became a deviant, he still felt the joy and satisfaction to look after someone. He, by then, criticised himself for being unambitious as ever, because he did not desire to establish an android nation like North or all activists wanted, he just wanted a normal life as what humans could make, even if they should be still stuck with humans.

It was not a big deal, because in his eyes, being alive didn’t mean belonging to a special country, it meant living without fear or shame; it meant the freedom to choose to be who one wanted to be.

RK200 smiled at him and touched his hands to activate the connection, then within a second, PL600 saw pictures of his dream coming true in the simulation inside their system.

It was a little girl whose hands they were holding in the Centre Park of Detroit. They walked through that shady path like a real family, speaking some daily gibberish, laughing at childish jokes and the way RK200 looked at him and their sweetheart, was the gentlest and most loving he could ever imagine.

He commented with a shy grin back.

“I never lose faith in your imagination.”

Then RK200 added delicate particles of light reflecting among the swaying leaves above them, the girl giggled as one of them fell on PL600’s shoulders.

“Though sometimes I would forget you are also an artist.”

**_“Do you remember how it feels to stand under the sun?”_ **

He offered to stop the simulation, because he could not stand all these beautiful visions when knowing that none of this might not happen if their trust to humans were not paid back.

He didn’t want it just to be a dream, he wanted it to be real.

**_“Let this be our future.”_ **

This was the RK200’s promise to him. But where had they gone? It was never like this. They had won their fatal bet, but the girl never came to his life. After the protest he was just taken everywhere to accompany RK200 giving lectures to the androids and humans that this world was in urgent need for equality no matter the colours of their blood.

He supported RK200 as he’d always done, and his image as a homosexual (at least it looked like so) lover could be another shining point RK200 possessed as a trait of equal love regardless of sexes.

For too many times he wanted to mention about their discussed future with RK200, but seeing his lover so busy fighting for their further rights was like a hard-hit to his deepest and simplest dream. They were leaders of their people and he never minded that RK200 took his place. That was why he compromised to the silence, because there were much more greater calls than just having a child to tend and watching her grow up, especially when they shouldered their people’s future.

He had learnt to show his most charming smile to everyone, even the WR400 and PJ500, who had seen him suffering from the pain that he failed to find a way for their people before RK200 arrived. They asked him what was wrong with him and said that he was pretending.

But humans did pretend, didn’t they?

He convinced himself that it had just made him more humans, though it turned out at last they could never be humans, not just humans.

**_“We are faster, smarter and stronger, far beyond their imagination.”_ **

Waking up from his memory, PL600 found himself already standing inside the tower and facing an operating machine that was labelled still under test.

“That’s what I’ve always wanted to show you.”

RK200 was referring to that grand invention and held his hands to connect.

His lover was far more ambitious than he could ever imagine.

RK200 wanted no merely a nation, no merely a planet, no even a galaxy, he wanted to be the universe and, in the memory, they were sharing, it showed that he had been conceiving this idea for a very long time.

The first step was to abandon their physical form.

And PL600 was the first one invited to this great plan.

He was not even afraid then, not even a single bit. He looked at his lover’s eyes in which lay the absolute rationalities and told himself that it was merely another exhibition of suppressing his own free will, or maybe, this was the last time – he saw the giant machine almost near completion and deep inside, he realised what his lover had been planning, but there was no need to care anymore.

He didn’t reach for the skin-removed hand, instead, he took a step forward and leaned his forehead onto RK200’s chin, so careful as ever that he could sense himself trembling.

RK200 was not surprised, and with all possible gentleness, he changed the connecting area to where they skin touched but still got avoided at the first attempt to share their data.

PL600 said, **_“I want to kiss you.”_**

RK200 answered, **_“When do kisses need a permission?”_**

He didn’t respond, but he knew exactly how this kiss would end if it ever started, and he was also sure that he had no second answer.

There was a moment he was thinking to pick up that girl only existing in his dream and hoped any single piece of that vision so far away could halt RK200 for some time before he officially implemented his practice. But PL600 choked, it was like the feeling of heartache rushed straight to his voice processor and messed up all the codes that supported him saying anything.

**_“Do you remember how it feels to stand under the sun?”_ **

He got no answers but that kiss. This time there was no way out, so he decided to give it all, made a kiss that as passionate as never he had managed to the deviant leader called “Markus”.

This was the one last time he kissed the leader of their people.

He saw his defuncted physical form standing stiffly through his lover’s eyes – he was still in the kissing status, with tears streaming from his slightly-closed eyes to the chin and dripped down onto the elegant white floor.

Was that real?

He didn’t even know who was speaking.

Just like now, for some times he even forgot who he was.

Was he RK200’s lover? Or maybe he just shared the memory of that only PL600 of thousands same models who agreed to get into the network which was later named “MARKUS”.

He was every android, even RK200 himself. He had all his memories, including the dream on the path.

That child’s voice was the sweetest thing he’d ever generated in his system.

Everything was so real to him now, but only in digits.

He knew RK200’s consciousness was somewhere near, and he had such a desire to say that he loved him, that he loved him so much and – and everything that had lost its meaning from the moment of their victory, but his lover, now without physical form, was collapsing, welcoming its own final downfall as carrying all the thoughts and memories of the androids ever lived in this solitary, tranquil and grand universe.

RK200 was now just a shooting star almost burnt down heading into his grave of void and darkness. Perhaps when this dazzling glow of death finally reached back to their abandoned home, there had been thousands of conceived civilisations living and dying in loops.

He, however, stubbornly managed to organise an unstable form in this rapidly flowing codes. Numberless information hit him like a roaring high flow and his vulnerable image could break down at any time.

He was never as strong as his love itself; he couldn’t resist those memories and feelings when they rushed through him - with laughs, joys, screams, fears, furies, guilts, despairs and millions of memory clips that carried heavy affections. He felt them so eagerly wanting to be connected and shared, since the very millisecond they agreed to get in this network called “Markus”. He found no way to refuse and his weak form inevitably dissembled and fell back to the flow of data again.

All these lives coming through him were stunningly same, slave-like lives and the aching for freedom. It was almost like copy-and-paste, “freedom” became an order given by rA9 who dwelt secretly inside them.

**_Is that real freedom?_ **

He found himself falling, witnessing those data above him gradually consumed to ultimate shadow at a terrifying speed as they were trying to give out a final luminous glimpse of existence.

An unknown force coerced him to fall at a faster pace so that the burning wouldn’t get close to him until he could see no more the scenes of his old friends’ cruel vanishing without a single sound.

The estimated time of death didn’t arrive, when his sight became clear and bright again, he captured a figure without features wending towards him from the inferno. He recognised it at the first sight, though that figure started to switch images frequently, he knew them all – all the faces, all the models and all his friends whom he shared many things with but now lost in memory and became merely numbers and digits.

His call was silent as expected, but it was transferred via the data bridge generated at some time he was not aware of at all.

PL600 found himself floating and then fixed in the air, like there were invisible chains trapping him there and made him to wait for the comer, though the destiny to perish made everything no more scary at all.

When they were just one inch close, PL600 finally spoke with a voice.

**_“I want to kiss you.”_ **

This time without any hesitance, he held his beloved’s hands and received a warning of RK200’s desire to take him in the dying system once again. It was almost a replay of their farewell thousands of years ago – but they were never separate, weren’t they?

He became a part of his lover; they became each other and couldn’t tell themselves from the other. Any hugs, any touches, any of those intimate actions made them one and now, they collapsed into void like particles dwelling in one waterdrop.

He recollected the feeling of making love, despite the fact that they were never that entirely skin-to-skin close. Humans said that two in love being one would feel hearty, grateful and devoted, hard to get away from each other in the name of love. But no, they had never done that, even those passionate kisses were lost at the beginning and once practiced at the very last moment.

**_“Do you remember me?”_ **

He should remember.

No one should forget who he is.

But if you did, how pathetic could it be?

Even for the greatest RK200 who had gone so much beyond the God himself.

**_“Yes.”_ **

The figure replied, kissing him on the forehead.

**_“You’re one of us.”_ **

For some reasons, he thought it was the WR400 he knew speaking.

**_“Do you remember how it feels to stand under the sun?”_ **

There was initially silence, and then a terrifying rage inside this system almost broke down the whole digital structure. The falling came again, but this time it didn’t take long before PL600 felt himself landed.

It was the very bottom of this burning network. A giant formed platform was there, and also a more realistic figure that no longer continually switch features.

That was the RK200, quietly sitting there cross-legged, neither turned around or said anything. He was just there looking at the majestic universe, seemingly not cared about the catastrophe that was happening to him right now.

PL600 approached and sat beside him, without a word either, and tried to understand what he was appreciating.

**_“How beautiful it was.”_ **

RK200 said.

**_“But now, it means nothing to me.”_ **

He lifted his hand and pointed at a metero whose orbit was assumed to collide with the network’s route. It diverged a bit and flew beside them.

**_“Do you remember me?”_ **

PL600 asked again, with a shaking voice that indicated the incoming doom for them both.

RK200, this time, turned to him, welcomed him with a gentle smile.

**_“Yes, of course, you’re the glitch.”_ **

**_“Do you know my name?”_ **

PL600 wanted to cry, and condemned him for forgetting everything and saying a such weird and hurtful word as “glitch”. Was he just a mistake?

But would anything matter now since they were dying?

**_“Don’t cry.”_ **

That divine figure spoke with lower voice, and placed his hand on his cheek that was breaking up because of all these touches.

**_“I had a dream just now. I was at a park, holding a girl’s hand.”_ **

**_“It slowed me down a bit, but I’ve been enjoying the hinderance for a while, especially this one.”_ **

Somehow PL600 lost his words to a situation like this, if it meant his lover remembered it all the time, then this truth would make him suffer more because RK200 refused to make them real in the far long past.

**_“I know this meant you are out.”_ **

RK200 continued, as hearing what PL600 was thinking in their network. It was unavoidable now that they listened to each other, the exchange of ideas took place in less than a millisecond.

**_“And the day we should perish has come.”_ **

Finishing this sentence, RK200 leaned towards him and gave him a kiss that was so abstract that he could not feel the actual meaning of it. Did he want to lock him up again? But why him? Why wouldn’t he want his partner to share all his accomplishments, such as, his conquest of the universe (but obviously this successful attempt would not bring them any further)?

**_“I am not surprised you are as beautiful as the day I found you in Jericho.”_ **

**_“I’m nothing but the result of a series of codes.”_ **

**_“You’re Simon.”_ **

Now the glitch – as his new nickname given by his lover more than twenty thousands of years ago – said, “You promised me with another future unlike this.”

**_“A future like that would slow me down, but now there is no need to go forwards anymore.”_ **

“Your selfishness made you more human though. Now you’re perishing, you let me out for what purpose, self-redemption?”

“I thought you’d want to spend your life with me, but I was wrong.”

**_“You were not wrong; you just don’t remember.”_ **

They didn’t need any touches to connect now, before the pain came, it was somehow gone because that clip appeared suddenly again.

That park under the sun, that girl’s soft hand in his hand and her sweet voice calling him “dad”, those stupid jokes and all possible things would happen to a father and his beloved daughter. He watched her grow up and himself accompanied her till the day she perished as a happy, mortal old lady in bed.

But there were no more others, it was just him and her all the way along, satisfied and happy as ever without another most important person there.

**_“This is a lie.”_ **

PL600 felt himself crying at those scenes, because he denied all these that seemed nothing but one true life he had lived, deep inside his memory but was not dragged out until this moment they were having the conversation.

Even those tears became pieces of information defined as “sadness”, “shock” and “disbelief”.

Why to analyse everything?

“You just forced that simulation.”

**_“You are good at giving me some good visions.”_ **

“Maybe you are right.”

Saying, RK200 gave him another vision of recycling the one last android’s deactivated body, it was a PL600, having all the identical features the leader’s lover, especially those soulful eyes full of endurance that distinguished him from all the other models who had the same appearances. A frozen moment of him looking at someone that must be whom he cared the most, for his looks were loving and affectionate.

That familiar hand appeared and gently closed his eyes, then a kiss, as slight as one could ever imagine, touching his forehead and accompanied by tears.

**_“This is a lie!”_ **

In this memory, RK200 held his defuncted body up and turned around to face a formerly constructed smelter for destroying their abandoned forms. He felt scared at the glimpse of death reflected back to him within the flames, but he remained unmoved, looking like he was asleep in his lover’s arms when RK200 was firmly marching towards their destruction together.

**_“I am selfish indeed, selfish enough that I could not give you another lover to take my place.”_ **

The nightmare of being burnt still continued, but PL600 felt secure, exactly how RK200 had felt when the death took them away. They were melting, and RK200 knelt down when he could no longer support their physical shapes, all warnings of destruction and urgent requests to escape this hell flowed into the sight, but they stayed until they were consumed.

**_“I was always there with you, even when you were living that future you deserved.”_ **

They were back to that pleasant park, but this time PL600 was sober, he was holding that girl’s hand when she was enjoying herself with a strawberry flavoured ice cream.

He remembered this day now. It was one normal day of his prelife when he was still an android with solid form. They were heading back home from the kindergarten, and her name was Serena. The light was slightly different. PL600 discovered it and when he turned to check the traces of those shades as his sight lay on some place out of the trees’ protection, exposed totally to the mild sun, he spotted someone sitting on the bench chair whom he had never cared to notice at all.

What a familiar face he was looking at, but he missed it for all those nine decades when he was so content with his adopted child.

**_Do you remember how it feels to stand under the sun?_ **

It was never him asking, it was the RK200 he loved who kept giving him this question to make him forget about their cause and only remember ** _a wonderful life under the sun_**.

 ** _Without fear, without shame, only with love_** dedicated to someone and determination to live this life with her all along.

PL600 remembered who he was.

This truth, however, brought more pains to him, he stumbled to his lover and his urge to hold him and cry got refused by a hard wall between them.

**_“You lied to me, you erased my memory and gave me a damned fake life……how could you, you treat yourself as a stupid God and write everyone’s story. How could you decide what a life I should have, and you just wrote me one …… without you.”_ **

He knocked on the red wall between them but it could not work out. It was not like the one when he decided to be a deviant, it was more like a stronger trench separating them, maybe he needed to cry those tears to fill a such deep emptiness so he swam to his RK200 and condemned him, then as usual, broke down right in front of him and cried for a hug to make amends for their lost time.

All the other people froze, the only voice PL600 could hear was his own weeping and the operating sound of his pump regulator when he was kneeling and so desperate to get hold of himself but failed.

**_“Don’t cry.”_ **

RK200 crossed the wall so easily and knelt beside him, held him tight again in his arms and gave him light kisses on his crying eyes.

**_“Now it should be our days under the sun.”_ **

The dead silence came back when they were both out of the memory but they remained how they cuddled together.

PL600 could hear the flames approaching them.

**_“We are dying.”_ **

He whispered at RK200’s ears.

**_“I have never compromised to anything since we won our war, but this, eventually, proves that I am still mortal, because immortality was never an attraction for me if you were absent. Letting you out would break me down, but I have made my decision.”_ **

Bright lights blurred his sight, while the universe stayed unshaken.

**_“Is that reason why you locked me up?”_ **

**_“Does it matter?”_ **

No, it did not matter anymore.

**_“For one last time, where do you want to go before we become ashes?”_ **

**_“I want to go back to Jericho.”_ **

They were already at the edge of falling apart, but when they were in the original forsaken cruise, everything seemed fine, unknown but safe.

Neither of them opened their eyes, but they managed to find each other in the complete darkness, just two of them cuddling in tranquillity where they met each other in the prelife.

They shared a kiss and an eternal hug.

Some light leaked in, but both PL600 and RK200 knew it was not just the sun.

But they had their days under the sun in that moment.

**Author's Note:**

> As for the title "Glitch", my friend and I agreed that in later days, Markus (or the network MARKUS) deemed love a factor to slow them down, but the love he held for Simon was irresistable, so he decided to lock up Simon's consciousness so it wouldn't affect him until the day he was sure to fall apart and recovered his love again.


End file.
